December 16 at 6:00 pm
Jewish emancipation
and Italian secularism: models for a modern nation. |
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How did Italian Jews come to re-define themselves as "Italians of Israelite religion"? Challenging the vision of a monolithic ghetto society, Luzzatto argues that in the wake of unification the Jewish world possessed dynamism and social diversity and ended up providing not only a model of a modern ruling class but also a disproportionate number of politicians, lawyers, economists, and scientists who, consciously or not, became champions of a new secular society.
Image: Mayor of Rome Ernesto Nathan
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December 17 at 6:00 pm
Counterpoints:
Jewish historiography, Italian history.
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In their journey toward emancipation and integration in Italian
society, Jews played an important role in history and its writing.
Offering a rich documentation that spans from historic
essays to popular press, Gadi Luzzatto explores the modes and tropes of
Jewish self-representation in 19th century Italy and explains why mainstream Jewish historiography in the peninsula did not embrace the idea of Wissenschaft des Judentums.
Image: Rav Samuel David Luzzatto
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December 18 at 6:00 pm
From the Mortara Affair to
Pius XII: in the Shadow of the Church.
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Emancipated, fully integrated, and secular, modern Italian Jews were no longer under the shadow of the Church.
Yet, between 1860 and 1945 the attitudes of two Popes significantly permeated their condition in society and ultimately, their fate.
Using era sources and contemporary criticism, Gadi Luzzatto tries to identify the underlying interpretative and polemical patterns that go from the Mortara case to the controversy on Pius XII.
Image: Edgardo Mortara
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